Slacker Radio launches on-demand service with 8 million songs

Slacker Radio, which is hoping to catch up to Internet radio leader Pandora Media Inc. of Oakland, has launched a new tier of service that has access to 8 million songs licensed from the major labels.

Slacker Premium Radio, which costs $9.99 per month, includes the ability to search for and play specific songs or albums on demand. It is a cloud-based music service, but users can still play back specific radio stations, playlists or albums on a mobile device even when it doesn’t have a wireless connection.

For the most part, the idea of creating a big “jukebox in the sky,” with all songs ever recorded available on demand, has remained an elusive dream for licensed online music companies.

But Jonathan Sasse, senior marketing vice president for San Diego’s Slacker Inc., said the company’s licensing deals with all the major record labels has allowed the most complete online music solution yet to be offered.

Slacker has about 25 million registered users, still far behind Pandora Media, which has filed plans to go public. In Pandora’s latest filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company reported 82 million registered users of its streaming music service and they listened to about 3.9 billion hours during the last fiscal year.

But Pandora programs its personalized radio stations from a catalog of about 800,000 songs and doesn’t offer specific songs on-demand.

Slacker added about 200,000 subscribers last year to its $4.99-per-month ad-free service, which included personalized news reports from ABC News. The company plans to add sports news from ESPN Radio later this year.